Christmas Craft #1

I am not a “crafty” person, so I’m a little surprised myself to announce that I made three crafts in December! I also don’t consider myself creative. I like to look up ideas from other creative people and see if they are doable for me. I thought I’d share these crafts for any other crafty-creatively-challenged people out there.

Craft #1: Decorated Pringles Cans

I got this idea from Country Woman magazine. You save Pringles cans, wash them out (don’t soak in water, or they’ll become unusable), and after decorating them, you put Christmas cookies in them and voila! You have a cute way to give out homemade baked goodies for Christmas presents.

I read about the idea last Christmas and ruminated on the idea all year, and then when I saw Pringles on sale in October, that decided it for me. Every year, I try to give out baked goodies to church members and neighbors–which becomes complicated when all the neighbors are related to each other. I end up having to give presents to about twenty different families!

The magazine suggested covering the body of the can with Christmas-y scrapbook paper, and then decorating with ribbon, rickrack, fabric tape, or bows on the lids. I was originally going to do that, but I don’t scrapbook, so I didn’t have any scraps of leftover paper; I would have had to go buy it, and I wasn’t sure I could find it easily here.

Instead I spray painted mine with leftover textured green paint we had (used on our rolls for our college diplomas in LBI’s last graduation!) When I ran out of that, I found some metallic spray paint for the last two cans. I also spray painted the lids and bottom of the can to hide the expiration date. Then I wrote “Happy Christmas” (thought “Merry” might be difficult English) in glitter glue on the front, filled them with no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies, and passed them out (in 100-degree weather!) right before Christmas.

I’ve never spray painted before, so the textured spray paint ran in places where I didn’t paint evenly enough. It was also difficult to use the glitter glue we found. I needed two hands to squeeze the glue out, and with roll-y cylindrical cans,  you can picture how that went. Also on some of the cans, the lines from the cardboard underneath showed, as you can see in the picture. But in general I was very pleased, and think I’ll reuse this idea next year. It would probably be prettier with scrapbook paper, and not take too much longer; but spraypaint was easier and faster for me, which is what I needed this year.

One lady told me she thought they were so beautiful, she’s kept the can as a decoration. Africans are easy to please. 🙂 In America, you might have to do something a little fancier than spray paint and no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies, but there’s the basic idea, and you can adapt it however it works for you!

The glitter glue was a little frustrating–I ran out on the can on the right of red, but I had to use every little bit, so mixed.

I ran out of green paint on the one on the left, so put some metallic at the top.